Sunday, January 4, 2009

I suppose it's a sign of the times in WoW that upgrades can come so fast and furious that you can sign on for an hour and a half or so on your backup (no graphics card) laptop from a shoddy hotel wireless connection and walk away with two epics and a rare. A few notes from the last evening of my road trip:

Green's String of Terrible Rolls at Archavon Continues....

I've had four opportunities to roll on mage drops from Archavon, and generally had some pretty poor luck all around. Last night was seemingly no exception, as I rolled a 3 when the [Heroes' Frostfire Gloves] dropped. The difference was that, this time, I was the only mage in the raid, so my 3 won and I walked away with a pair of gloves I'd just resolved to spend 60 emblems on. These beauties don't have any of those suboptimal stats that plague a lot of T7 quality mage loot, so I could quite possibly be holding on to them for quite some time (or until next week's 25-man Archavon kill, who knows?).

Several things I'm taking away from the experience:- As I've discussed before, having an instant gratification loot pinata like Archavon in the game really makes one question the worth of doing things the hard way. This happy experience might have been the opposite effect if it had come the week after I spent 60 Emblems on the gloves, even though they're well worth 60 Emblems. I'm not even considering saving emblems for the T7 robes at this point - Uncle Archavon will take care of me somewhere down the line. - Another loser here are the crafted [Spellweave Gloves] - a price war between the local tailors (no doubt in search of skill points) had driven the cheapest pair on the AH down to 600G, and I had been thinking about buying them at that price before I had to run off because Wintergrasp was starting.

Just plain cashing outI also purchased a [Dark Runic Mantle] to replace my old [Duskweave Shoulders]. I probably overpaid a bit (the buyout was 200G), but I'm no longer at the point in my WoW career where I'm willing to camp the AH for extended periods of time to try and save 100G on a piece of gear that I will wear immediately on my main. The mantle is arguably the best of the rare options in a slot with few pre-raid alternatives, so I'm calling it a good buy. Good old Uncle Archavon doesn't drop shoulders (only robes, pants, and gloves), so this might actually be the top of the line for me if they don't add some form of shoulder rewards to one of the upcoming content patches.

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About Player Versus Developer

I'm what they call a "WoW Tourist" - WoW was my first MMO, and being able to set my own schedule is a dealbreaker. At any given time, I can be found ducking in and out of half a dozen different MMO's.

This blog details some of my own personal exploits, but it also focuses on a meta-gaming issue that I find very interesting - the decisions developers make on how to reward player activity, and the decisions players make in response to maximize their own rewards.